Posts Tagged ‘American Experience’

Witness the struggles of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown to end slavery in The Abolitionists: American Experience. Part one of the three-part series premieres tonight at 9/8 pm on KET and Thursday, Jan. 13 at 10/9 pm on KET2.

Vividly bringing to life the epic struggles of the men and women who fought to end slavery, The Abolitionists tells the intertwined stories of Douglass, Garrison, Grimké, Stowe and Brown. Fighting body and soul, they led the most important civil rights crusade in American history.

What began as a pacifist movement became a fiery and furious struggle that forever changed the nation. Black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy, these passionate anti-slavery activists tore the nation apart in order to form a more perfect union. The series, which tells the story largely through period drama narrative, airs 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863.

History lovers, take note. This week, KET profiles Confederate General Robert E. Lee, dives to the wreckage of the USS Arizona, travels through the Jim Crow South with John Howard Griffin, and hides in plain sight with WWI Allied troops.

First, American Experience looks at a man who is celebrated by equestrian statues across the American South and by five postage stamps issued by the government he fought against during the four bloodiest years in American history. This film examines the life and reputation of the general, whose military successes made him the scourge of the Union and the hero of the Confederacy. The program airs Monday, Jan. 3 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET.

Then, Nova joins an exclusive dive beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor to trace new clues to the historic sinking of the USS Arizona. The discovery of a Japanese “midget sub” far from the scene of the battle raises new questions about the Arizona‘s final hours. “Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor” airs Tuesday, Jan. 4 at 8/7 p.m. CT on KET.

Next, John Howard Griffin is best known as the white man who traveled through the heart of Dixie in 1959 disguised as a black man. From his experiences he wrote Black Like Me. Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin focuses on his social activism, spiritual commitment, and his creative life as a writer/photographer. The program airs Tuesday, Jan. 4 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET.

And finally, Invisible: Abbott Thayer and the Art of Camouflage, airing Thursday, Jan. 6 at 8/7 p.m. CT on KET2, profiles artist and naturalist Thayer, who gave up fame and fortune to study how animals conceal themselves from predators. During World War I, Thayer destroyed his health in frenzied efforts to persuade the Allies to adopt his camouflage theories to safeguard troops and ships. Few listened to him until long after his death.

American Experience‘s epic look at Native-American history encores on KET

Monday, Oct. 18, 2010

They were charismatic and forward thinking, imaginative and courageous, compassionate and resolute, and, at times, arrogant, vengeful, and reckless. For hundreds of years, Native-American leaders from Massasoit, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa, to Major Ridge, Geronimo, and Fools Crow valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture.

“We Shall Remain” spans three hundred years to tell the story of pivotal moments in U.S. history from the Native-American perspective. Beginning in the 1600s with the Wampanoags, who used their alliance with the English to strengthen their position in Southern New England, and ending with the bold new leaders of the 1970s, who harnessed the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement to forge a pan-Indian identity, the series upends two-dimensional stereotypes of American Indians as simply ferocious warriors or peaceable lovers of the land.